Badaguish Outdoor Centre map

Pete

Posted 05 January 2010 - 12:10 PM

Pete

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Here's something I was working on towards the end of last year.

The officer at the centre was wanting a new map to replace the previous effort: a roughly circular path around a small pond with clipart buildings and Microsoft Wordart text ... I came over all unnecessary just looking at it !

While I was talking with him it came out that he liked seeing the sides of the buildings as portrayed in the clipart even though they were not what is on the ground. I've been interested in the plan-oblique methodology for a long time and thought this might be a good time to try it out but I didn't have the time or resources to pull it off. The map is completely planar - flat as the proverbial - but the trees and buildings give a not too bad feeling of perspective and the clouds (yes, clouds to the rescue!) sort of give an impression of looking down through something but that just might be me ...

Posted 05 January 2010 - 04:04 PM

Clouds must be the cartographer's Marmite: you either like them or you don't !

Believe me, the clouds aren't half as distracting as the repeating trees that they cover up - I made up 3 different sized brushes of 2 different trees in an attempt to cover up the lack of variation but it was still a little obvious. I have tried the map without the clouds and it' simply too green if you know what I mean: too many shapes and to much green, really quite an eye-full in its own way ... it really does need a vingette of some kind. As a compromise I could remove the cloud texture and leave the fuzzy mask behind ... see how that looks.

Posted 05 January 2010 - 04:06 PM

Jean-Louis

Posted 05 January 2010 - 05:10 PM

Jean-Louis

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Glad to see someone new trying their hand in the 3D oblique world!.
The subdued landscape color is very nice and does'nt overpower your buildings although your buildings do look a bit stick-like.
I think the clouds look great. and you are right in saying that they distract less than the tree repetition.
2 suggestions for you:
try to add some shadows to your buildings. that adds a lot of volume and interest.
If you are concerned about 'tree repetition' try color variations

DaveB

Posted 06 January 2010 - 10:33 AM

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Nice
I think the clouds are fine. The buildings* do have slight shadows, maybe the shadows could be "beefed" up just a little?
I would like a little more contrast between the brown areas and green areas. They almost fade together for me.
Are the numbers the actual designations for those buildings? If not it might be better to spell out the labels. There seems to be plenty of room. (or maybe they don't want them spelled out...)
I find the labels with halos a bit hard on my eyes. I don't know if it's the font and/or the halo. Could you use a different font? Or maybe instead of white halos that follow the contours of the letters just a semi-transparent patch/rounded rectangle (or what we call a convex hull in ArcGIS)?
Some of the trees seem to lean slightly (see the small stand between the hall and kitchen and the sports hall).

*looks like someone has been using Sketchup (nothing wrong with that! I made some buildings with Sketchup myself for a map for a demo)

Pete

Posted 06 January 2010 - 11:01 AM

*looks like someone has been using Sketchup (nothing wrong with that! I made some buildings with Sketchup myself for a map for a demo)

Ooops, rumbled !

There is a bit of a shadow on the buildings and trees - you're right - but the trouble I have is getting the shadows to match. The trees are a brush in Illustrator (proably not the right way to do it with hindsight but if I haven't learnt anything from making a map then I've not done it right!) and the quickest way I can get shadows is to expand the brush and rotate the trees by 45 degrees and give them a bit of a feathering. The big problem with doing it this way is that it implies that the sun is very low in the sky. I altered the shadow setting in SketchUp to match as best I could and added the buildings shadows from there. I did have the shadows in quite heavily to start with but because they are so long it looks as though they're testing nuclear bombs at Cairngorm! I think what I'll need to do is shorten the expanded trees first and then rotate them, then make shorter shadows for the buildings.

The other problem with the way of the brush is you can't easily vary the colours. I can make the trees as grey shapes and then set the colouring mode to tints and shades to set the colour manually but the problem with that was I landed up with tiger-striped trees ... not ideal. I suppose in this case it's not such a problem as the trees around Badaguish are primarily plantation so are fairly uniform in size and colour but if I was in a more "wild" area I might have to find a better way ...

I'm afraid the text hasn't come out at all well in the image I attached. I've got a little part here at roughly actual size:

Does that look better? The text halos have a bit of a fluffy texture to tie in with the clouds ... maybe one cloudy texture too many?!

I see what you mean about the lean-y trees but I assure you my trees are all fine upstanding speciments ! It looks as though the slanting rooflines on either side of the trees play a bit of a trick on the eyes.

DaveB

Posted 06 January 2010 - 11:14 AM

I'm afraid the text hasn't come out at all well in the image I attached. I've got a little part here at roughly actual size:

Does that look better? The text halos have a bit of a fluffy texture to tie in with the clouds ... maybe one cloudy texture too many?!

That does look more legible. I think I see why it's not quite optimal to my eyes - the edges are "ragged" so the halo is uneven in relation to the letters. Some parts of the text end up with stronger halos than others. Now I can see you're emulating the clouds with the halos. I'm just not sure that works well.